Keywords

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The world faces global challenges, which require global solutions. These interconnected global challenges call for far-reaching changes in how we think and act for the dignity of fellow human beings. It is not enough for education to produce individuals who can read, write and count. Education must be transformative and bring shared values to life. It must cultivate an active care for the world and for those with whom we share it. (Global Education First Initiative, United Nations, 2012).

In recent decades, globalization has driven the significant reimagining of education policies and practices. Transnational economic, political, and cultural shifts, facilitated through increasing physical and virtual connectivity, have stimulated new conceptions of the individual and society, and are transforming the goals and purposes of education (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Stewart, 2007; Vertovec, 2001). In this context, it is increasingly argued by policy makers and educators that education systems need to be understood as transnational spaces, with goals and outcomes no longer limited to national interests, but instead to broader global concerns (OECD, 2014; Stewart, 2007). In response to these arguments, ‘Global citizenship’ has emerged as a major educational goal for the twenty-first century, particularly in schools, where curriculum and pedagogy are positioned as key sites for fostering the production of ‘cosmopolitan’ global citizens (Duckworth, Levy, & Levy, 2005; Kanan & Baker, 2006). The building of global citizens has become a central aim for many international schools in particular, which assumedly offer an ‘international education’ and are seen as uniquely placed to foster global citizenship. The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), for example, positions global citizenship as a central aim of its International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes.

Despite this enhanced focus on global citizenship, there remains significant debate about what exactly the concept means and looks like in practice. This uncertainty relates not only to manifestations of the concept in schools, but also in terms of how it is understood and enacted in theory, research and policy. Indeed, it is clear that multiple and contested definitions and modes of practice exist in relation to the concept, as well as a ‘blurring’ between the term and other related concepts such as ‘intercultural understanding’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’. While such contestation is to be expected, given the broad global framing of the term and its historical novelty, uncertainty concerning the concept has the capacity to cause significant confusion for policy makers and educators, who are responsible for putting it into practice. As Ball, Maguire and Braun (2012) note, any education reform initiative is always “configured, contextually mediated and institutionally rendered” (p. 3). Moreover, at the school level, reforms are “intimately shaped and influenced by school-specific factors which act as constraints, pressures and enablers” (p. 19). Global citizenship, therefore, is not only likely to be understood differently in different educational spaces, but is also likely to manifest in multiple and varied practices. This poses problems for how the concept can be understood theoretically and for how it can be imagined and enacted in future reform initiatives.

This chapter seeks to problematize meanings of ‘global citizenship’. It begins with a critical review of theory and policy in an attempt to understand the dominant ways in which the concept is understood and rationalized. Following this, the chapter presents empirical data based on an ethnographic study into how global citizenship is understood by school leaders and teachers in an international school located in Thailand that has strong commitments to promoting the concept. The key argument of the chapter is that the contested nature of global citizenship in theory and policy is mirrored in the ways educators understand, describe, and enact the concept. Not only is there wide definitional variation between educators regarding what global citizenship means and how it might be promoted, there is also marked resistance to the concept amongst some educators. These findings have implications for how global citizenship is conceptualized in theory, and also for policy makers and educators who seek to enact global citizenship as an educational goal.

Education, Citizenship and Globalization

Education has always played an integral role in the creation of citizens (Balarin, 2011). Since the introduction of state supported education across multiple nations from the early nineteenth century onwards, schooling has become a central mechanism for nation-building and state formation, mediating the complex relationships between individuals and societies (Dewey, 2004; Kong, 2013). Schooling systems, therefore, not only reflect broader social contexts and imperatives, they also assist in creating them (Harber & Mncube, 2011; Yates & Grumet, 2011). As John Dewey argued back in 1923:

… education became a civic function and the civic function was identified with the realization of the ideal of the national state … To form the citizen, not the ‘man’, became the aim of education (Dewey, 2012, p. 64).

Globalization, however, has vastly complicated the historically nation-centric aims of education systems and citizen building. Earlier conceptions of citizenship education that emphasized civic action within national borders are now increasingly viewed as inadequate for addressing emerging transnational realities (see Osler, 2011). As Hughes (2001), suggests: “It is now impractical in the extreme to think that peaceful societies can be built in isolation. The relationship with others is as important beyond national borders as it is within them” (p. 8).

The building of citizens, however, is not the sole driving force behind global citizenship education. For example, a strong emphasis in recent policy iterations has been to frame global citizenship and other cosmopolitan ideas and practices as central to strengthening national productivity in a global economy. This approach is well illustrated in the 2008 Australian “Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians”, a national agreement on educational goals that is signed by all education ministers (federal, state and territory). The Declaration states:

In the 21st century, Australia’s capacity to provide a high quality of life for all will depend on the ability to compete in the global economy on knowledge and innovation. Education equips young people with the knowledge, understanding, skills and values to take advantage of opportunity and to face the challenges of this era with confidence … Global integration and international mobility have increased rapidly in the past decade. As a consequence, new and exciting opportunities for Australians are emerging. This heightens the need to nurture an appreciation of and respect for social, cultural and religious diversity, and a sense of global citizenship. India, China and other Asian nations are growing and their influence on the world is increasing. Australians need to become ‘Asia literate’, engaging and building strong relationships with Asia. Globalisation and technological change are placing greater demands on education and skill development in Australia and the nature of jobs available to young Australians is changing faster than ever. (MCEETYA 2008, p. 4)

As this excerpt suggests, the need for global citizenship and heightened engagement with Asia is framed not simply as a benevolent social aim, but as central to a broader economic strategy to ensure young people and the nation are well prepared for productive engagement in the ‘global knowledge economy’. Being a global citizen, in this sense, is primarily an economic imperative and insurance strategy against global risk in a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected and competitive.

Of course, in seeking to understand global citizenship, it is important not to treat globalization itself as a taken-for-granted concept or as an all-encompassing monolithic condition with clearly fixed and knowable attributes. Indeed, despite the pervasiveness of the term, globalization evades simple definition (Garson, 2012). This is, in large part, because globalization is a highly disjunctive and uneven process. As Appadurai (2002) has argued, globalization can be conceptualized as an artifact of multiple flows of information, technology, culture, capital, media, ideas and people occurring with increasing rapidity across space. These global ‘scapes’ mean that social relations and actions now take place in ways that cut unevenly through and across national boundaries and local communities, and which lead to the production of complex transnational networks. Rizvi and Lingard (2010) further this point with regards to education specifically, arguing that despite global interconnectivity rising at unprecedented rates, we are witnessing highly uneven effects in education policy and reform. Globalization, they suggest, can be seen as a double-edged sword: simultaneously operating as a mechanism of social connection and exclusion.

Slippery Concepts: Global Citizenship, Cosmopolitanism, and Global Citizenship Education

The abundance and diversity of literature attempting to define ‘global citizenship’ and related concepts such as ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘global citizenship education’ is indicative of the slipperiness of such concepts (see, for example, Chui & Leung, 2014; Garson, 2012; Kleingeld & Brown, 2014; Reysen & Katzarska-Miller, 2013; Roman, 2003; Shultz, 2007). Perhaps one of the only agreed upon aspects in the literature is that there are evident contradictions and inconsistencies in how these terms are understood. Cosmopolitanism, for example, which is widely acknowledged as a foundational concept for global citizenship, has been conceptualized in multiple ways. Beck (2000), for instance, frames cosmopolitanism as both a process and an outcome. Hannerz (1990) explains that while, “cosmopolitanism is first of all an orientation, a willingness to engage with the Other” (p. 238), it is also “a matter of competence… of both a generalized and a more specialized kind” (p. 238). Hansen (2010), similarly suggests that cosmopolitanism may be treated both “as a proposed solution to contemporary problems generated by globalization and other macro forces” (p. 10) as well “as a way of living, or way of being, that answers to life’s unimagined possibilities and its all too determinant predicaments” (p. 10). Roudometof (2005) argues that the term, “can be applied to several different research sites, including cities and their cultural milieus, religions, individual attitudes and philosophical or ideological or ethical perspectives” (p. 116).

Regarding global citizenship specifically, Oxley and Morris (2013) identify two types of global citizenship circulating in current discourse – Cosmopolitan and Advocacy – with eight different forms included under those categories. These are Political, Moral, Economic, and Cultural (‘Cosmopolitan’ types), and Social, Critical, Environmental, and Spiritual (‘Advocacy’ types).Footnote 1 Arguably the boldest and most contentious of these forms is the notion of political global citizenship, which frames cosmopolitanism or global citizenship as a means to create “a polis or polity constructed on a world scale, rather than on the basis of regional, territorially limited states” (Waldron, 2000, pp. 227–228). In literal terms, the feasibility of a ‘global citizen’ (i.e. a member of a singular ‘world-state’) is highly contested (Balarin, 2011; Parekh, 2003). Bates (2012), for instance, states: “Strictly and legally global citizenship is not possible, as citizenship is a concept ineluctably associated with the nation-state” (p. 262). Others similarly assert that even if being a global citizen were practicable, it is not desirable as it “ignores special ties and attachments to one’s community” (Parekh, 2003, p. 12).

Nussbaum (1996), however, argues that “to be a citizen of the world one does not need to give up local identifications” (p. 9) (see also Alviar-Martin, 2010; Gunesch, 2004). Instead, in line with the Stoics’ philosophy, Nussbaum suggests that an individual’s civic identity may be thought of as a series of concentric circles, first surrounding the self, then immediate family, neighbours and local community, countrymen, and the final (and broadest) circle encompassing humanity as a whole. Nussbaum favours the term ‘citizen of the world’ to ‘global citizenship’, suggesting individuals who are able to connect broader global concerns to individual concerns, and vice versa, move closer to such an ideal. Nussbaum suggests this global disposition towards citizenship may be achieved by individuals who prioritize broader commitments to the ‘world community’ over local and partisan loyalties, thus encouraging a more global sense of one’s place and responsibilities in the world. Nussbaum is promoting, therefore, a kind of ‘cosmopolitan ethic’, which encourages, as Appiah (2006) suggests, recognition of certain “obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kind” (p. xv).

In education, the notion of instilling young people with this kind of ‘global disposition’ has been central to articulations of global citizenship in theory and policy. Indeed, a pervasive theme amongst education policy-makers and researchers is the importance of education as a mechanism “for shaping cosmopolitan attitudes as well as institutions” (Rizvi, 2008, p. 102). This kind of approach to global citizenship has become a major agenda item for governments and schools around the world and is central to how ‘global citizenship education’ is understood. In broad terms, ‘global citizenship education’ refers to a set of curricula and pedagogical ideas and practices that are principally designed to foster the building of global citizens and cosmopolitan young people. As highlighted by Oxley and Morris (2013), however, the term “is subject to a wide range of interpretations in the diverse contexts in which it is appropriated and promoted”, and, as such, both ‘global citizenship’ and ‘global citizenship education’ tend to be “used ambiguously and understood differently both within and across contexts” (pp. 301–302).

The idea of global citizenship education has emerged with particular gusto among international schools. Originating due to the dramatic increase in Western expatriates who ostensibly desired their children to receive a Western education (Blaney, 2000; Heyward, 2002; Kong, 2013), the types and characteristics of schools now subsumed within the ‘international school’ label has broadened considerably (Bates, 2012; Grimshaw & Sears, 2008; Heyward, 2002). As Drake (2011) notes, “the debate on the nature of international schools has engaged the minds of many educators for upwards of 30 years without, it has to be said, having made a great deal of progress” (p. 142).

Still, while specific definitions in the literature differ, there seems to be a common consensus on certain factors that are present in contemporary international schools. For instance, they may have curricula independent of the host nation, provide instruction in a language other than that of the host nation, or they may have a student population that is multinational, culturally diverse, and, for the most part, globally mobile (Bagnall, 2012; Davy, 2011; Hayden & Thompson, 2001; Langford, 1998; Leach, 1969; Matthews, 1988). Many international schools have also taken up cosmopolitan ideals in some depth, and make explicit (or implicit) commitments to the promotion of global citizenship in school mission statements or via core curricula, extra-curricula or pedagogical commitments (see, for example, International School of Brussels; Nexus International School; United World Colleges).

International schools may offer curricula based upon a particular national system, or they may choose to adopt an international curriculum such as the Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) or the International Baccalaureate (IB), or even a combination. Many schools that adopt the IB, of which there are currently 4,277 (IBO, 2015), reflect a dedication to global citizenship and its related constructs, and are frequently cited as exemplars in terms of educating for global citizenship (Alviar-Martin, 2010; Duckworth, Levy, & Levy, 2005; Gigliotti-Labay, 2010). Historically, the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) was founded to offer students a credential that would allow for entry into universities around the world, and that was also independent from any particular national education system. The IB has evolved, however, into a framework that is now widely acknowledged not only for its academic rigour, but also for its focus on global and cosmopolitan themes. This is evident in the IB’s Mission Statement:

The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment. These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right. (IBO Mission Statement, Source: IBO Website)

Of course, statements like this are necessarily broad in focus and purpose, and do not shed any light on what such global commitments might mean when translated into more specific educational aims and practices. This broadness of definition is reflected in other aspects of the IB, such as the Learner Profile, which describes a set of ten “learner attributes” designed to produce learners who are academically well prepared and ‘internationally-minded’, but which also maintains a high level of generality. Coupled with enduring tensions in theory and policy over the many and varied meanings of global citizenship, how such a contested concept may be translated into practice remains in doubt.

Understanding Global Citizenship in an International School

In light of the slippery and contested nature of global citizenship in theory and policy, the question begs: How do school leaders and educators understand the concept? More specifically, and for the purposes of this chapter: How do teachers working in an international school that offers the IB interpret broader imperatives concerning the teaching of global citizenship?

To explore these questions, we now turn to an analysis of insights generated from a one-year ethnographic study into how global citizenship is understood and enacted in an international school located in northern Thailand. While the study analyzed both ideas and practices relating to global citizenship in the school, this chapter focuses specifically on the former, by exploring how educators understand, describe, and rationalize global citizenship in education.

Methodologically, our analysis draws upon a series of interviews, observations and document analyses conducted by the lead author at Lakeview SchoolFootnote 2 between 2014 and 2015.Footnote 3 The school is a prestigious and high-fee paying day and boarding school, with approximately 450 enrolled students, and 70 academic staff across the 4 IB programmes. The school was selected for research because it is an international school that offers the full suite of IB programmesFootnote 4 and has a strong emphasis on ‘global citizenship’ in both its promotional materials and curricula foci.Footnote 5 For example, the school’s Mission Statement states that the school challenges students to act as “principled global citizens” who reflect the compassion and knowledge required to work together for “a sustainable future” (Lakeview Website, 2015)

The school also has a highly developed “Visiting Schools Programme” (VSP), which each year caters to thousands of visiting school students from around the world. The school’s VSP is marketed as having an explicit commitment to building ‘global citizens’. All VSP team leaders, for example, wear VSP t-shirts with ‘Global Citizens’ emblazoned across the front. In many cases, visiting schools integrate their trip with the “Creativity, Action, Service” element of the IB curriculum framework, which has a strong service-learning focus and provides multiple opportunities to educate for global citizenship.

Demographically, students at Lakeview represent middle to high socioeconomic status backgrounds, heralding from over 50 nationalities. Consistent streams of visiting students engaged in the VSP buttress this diversity. VSP students stay on-site at the school within purpose-built facilities that are integrated into the boarding accommodation. Staff members at the school also herald from multiple nations, with the majority of school leaders and teachers from England, Australia, Canada and the USA. Teaching aides, support staff, maintenance workers, gardeners and catering staff are typically drawn from the local Thai community. Lakeview is a rich site, therefore, for investigating the convergence of multiple nationalities and cultural perspectives, and how these factors contribute to the ways ‘global citizenship’ is understood.

In conducting the research, a number of key findings emerged about how global citizenship is understood by educators at the school. In the sections to follow, we draw attention to three dominant themes to emerge:

Varying Conceptions and Pockets of Resistance

The challenge of defining ‘global citizenship’ within theory and policy was strongly mirrored at Lakeview School, with educators expressing varied understandings of the concept. As one teacher succinctly put it, “it’s a tricky one… you’re dealing with a very amorphous type of an idea and everybody has a different definition about what it is.”

The Head of Lakeview School demonstrated a conception of global citizenship reminiscent of definitions by authors such as Appiah (2006), which prioritize individual dispositions and obligations to others, suggesting:

It’s disposition. And that disposition is based upon, ‘I care for myself, I care for others, I do care, and I’m connected’. So, therefore, with those connections I need to make sure that what I do doesn’t damage what they do down the other end of that connection, and I want that connection to be two ways.

Similar views resonated amongst other school leaders, but were expressed in more straightforward and practical terms. The Head of the Primary Years Programme (PYP), for example, said:

I think it really is just helping kids to learn to accept others … it’s going back to the old, ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it’. And just because they’re different doesn’t mean … you know.

The Head of the Diploma Programme (DP) described the term as something linked to the heightened levels of global mobility experienced by students, suggesting global citizenship was “an experience” or “condition” that mobility produced, which de-anchored individuals from the national contexts in which they were officially citizens and gave them a different way of understanding the world. Global citizenship, therefore, was not just a disposition, but was something born necessarily out of physical mobility. In making this point, she reflected as much upon her experiences as those of her students:

I’m probably one of the rare international school teachers who has lived that same type of international life as the majority of the kids… I moved around every year of my life switching schools all of the time. So I have a personal connection to that global context … I think that when I work with other international teachers, I find they often lack that understanding because they, they are so ingrained within their own national situation or national experience that they had, that when they come into an international school initially, they struggle to separate their own personal national identity from that of what they are doing in their classrooms as well, to a certain extent. They know they’re teaching international kids but still they’re using the context of their own understanding of the world to bring it into the classroom as well.

Although much has been written about global citizenship and its association with global mobility, class and elite social groups (e.g. Balarin, 2011; Roudometof, 2005; Smart, 1971; Vandrick, 2011), the majority of educators at Lakeview School rejected this conceptualization of global citizenship as necessarily linked to physical mobility. As the Head of School said, travel might be “very good for [displaying pictures on] Instagram, and for Facebook, but it doesn’t actually take you any closer to actually becoming a global citizen.” Others said:

Why do people say that somebody who’s never been out of their country is totally not a global citizen? They could have read as much and discussed and researched countries as much, they might not have been able to actually go and see them but they’re still interested in the world. – Lakeview Teacher

There’s people making those connections and coming to the realization that you’re not exceptionally special and there are people around the world just like you. And that’s, that’s global citizenship… you don’t even have to leave your room. So you don’t need to fly first class, you don’t need to stay in five star hotels, that’s elitism. – Director of Boarding

Comments like these raise important questions about whether transnational mobility (in a physical sense) is a necessary condition in the production of ‘global citizens’, or whether one can be instilled with the disposition of a global citizen while being anchored in a specific locality (a process that may involve various ‘virtual mobilities’ being fostered, particularly through technology and social media). While the comments of the Head of the DP indicate that without global mobility students are unable to achieve the global disposition necessary to look beyond their national roots, comments from other participants suggest that this is not the case.

The relationship between physical mobility and the disposition of global citizenship point was furthered explored by the Head of the School, who sought to draw a distinction between ‘internationalism’ and ‘global citizenship’:

The globally mobile are largely at the stage of internationalism rather than at the stage of global citizenship. Global citizen, you don’t need to leave this office to be a global citizen, you don’t even have to have left Melbourne to be a global citizen. You can be a wonderful global citizen sitting in a barrio, or a neighbourhood in Melbourne.

This comment echoes the work of Roudometof (2005) on cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, and ‘glocalization’, which suggests physical transnational mobility is not a prerequisite for cosmopolitanism or for participation and power in transnational contexts. What is required, he suggests, is an “open attitude welcoming the new experiences” (p. 127), as opposed to one that seeks “to limit the extent to which transnational social spaces penetrate their cultural milieu” (p. 127). While Roudometof is specifically referring to cosmopolitanism here rather than global citizenship, the comments from participants above suggest that his argument may be extended to include both constructs.

While the educators above typically viewed global citizenship in positive terms and endorsed its continued integration into schools, others were positioned very differently, reflecting considerable resistance to, if not outright dislike of, global citizenship. For instance, the Director of Boarding asserted, “it’s not a good way to describe people”, and suggested that the term had developed into an education ‘buzz word’ that lacked real substance and meaning when put into practice in schools:

Whether they need to have a title for it. I don’t think you do. I think that unfortunately we always seem to want to title things or tag them and why? Why? … I don’t get a good feeling being referred to as a global citizen… it really is a buzz-word that people have picked up. And it doesn’t even say, I just don’t know. How you can ever describe someone as a ‘global citizen’?

The Head of the Junior School made similar comments, saying, “all these words have made it much, much bigger than it really is”, and suggesting the concept had been blown out of proportion in education policy and curriculum. She also said the so-called attributes that sought to describe global citizenship were not necessarily global, but instead were “just good things you need to do”. In other words, she did not see the disposition usually described as a marker of global citizenship as any different from what it means to be a good person.

These pockets of resistance speak powerfully to the work of Shultz (2007), who suggests that in light of the many and varied definitions and conceptions of global citizenship, the term could potentially be rendered meaningless in practice. Luke (2004) suggests that in an “environment of proliferating curricular and administrative bids for time,” staff may develop “change fatigue” (p. 1428). Indeed, one Lakeview teacher described the culture at the school as being one of “fad diets” where many different initiatives are introduced but with little corresponding follow through, and, therefore, with little incentive for staff to commit. Educating for global citizenship, therefore, not only suffers from variations in understandings, but also runs the risk of adding to the disenfranchisement of educators who view the reforms or initiatives associated with it as fads that lack substantive meaning and purpose when enacted in schools.

Competing Orientations Towards the Concept

Educators at Lakeview also reflected different orientations towards the concept of global citizenship. Weber (2011), for example, argues that global citizenship education is characterized by two competing discourses: one framed in relation to a social justice paradigm (emphasising greater fairness) and the other framed as a means to prepare students for participation in a global market (emphasizing greater competition). Educators at Lakeview reflected aspects of both orientations when discussing global citizenship.

In line with the school’s Mission Statement, for example, some educators foregrounded understandings of global citizenship that aligned with ‘internationalist’ orientations, which emphasize the importance of global citizenship from a moral and democratic standpoint (e.g. Cambridge, 2003; Crossley & Watson 2003; Simandiraki, 2006). For instance, in discussing the key characteristics of a global citizen, the Head of School said:

You can no longer, if you’re a global citizen, you can’t shut your mouth and you can’t shut your eyes. You can use your cell phone to actually capture video and then tweet it out and then to hold governments accountable.

In making this comment, the Head of School was referring to the various moral responsibilities individuals now have in an interconnected world in which advances in technologies and social media make it possible to share information and affect the democratic process in new ways. The ‘global citizen’, therefore, can play an activist role through exposing inequalities and injustices on the global stage and, in turn, holding national governments to account. This kind of social media-driven global citizenship is exemplified by the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, which is widely accepted to have been fuelled by media and political activism channeled through Twitter, Facebook, Blackberry Messenger, and online blogs.

Educators at Lakeview, however, also reflected distinctly ‘market-driven’ orientations towards global citizenship (see Matthews, 1988). One teacher, for example, argued that facilitating global citizenship “is more important” for international schools that offer international curricula, as such schools, “will have a higher percentage of students actually move abroad and work abroad.” This teacher drew a contrast between what he imagined as a typical international school student, as distinct from a student who might be more likely to stay anchored to a particular local context, arguing: “the skillset they [international school students] are going to have to have in dealing with other cultures is radically different than kids who are going to live and die in Perth.” This comment clearly oversimplifies the aspirations and future mobilities of students in different localities and school systems, and draws a false and arguably elitist distinction in doing so. However, the underlying point being made by this teacher is revealing insofar as it suggests global citizenship is primarily important for students in international schools because it is a means to increase their likelihood of success in a transnational economy. He added, for example:

The ability to understand and interact with people from other cultures is essential to their success in so many things … whatever job they may go into, they’re going to be talking to people manufacturing in a different culture, or marketing firms that come from a different continent.

The international school student, in this sense, is one strongly aligned with the kind of economic approach to global citizenship that is increasingly prevalent in policy, which frames the concept as an insurance strategy against future economic risk by imbuing young people with a set of self-capitalizing attributes that better place them to compete and win in the race of global capitalism.

The fact that distinct orientations exist simultaneously at Lakeview is no surprise. The work of Gigliotti-Labay (2010) and Snowball (2008), for example, suggests this is the case more often than not. The coexistence of orientations, however, does have the capacity to produce tensions in terms of how the concept of global citizenship is put into practice. For example, classroom observations at Lakeview suggest students were frequently encouraged, as one teacher put it, to “understand the interconnectedness of global issues”, and to critically examine their own beliefs and develop empathic awareness. For example, in a DP Geography lesson investigating development, students were asked to consider how they would feel if they were unable to attend school anymore, and then what they may achieve given their position of relative privilege. Activities of this nature are clearly oriented towards educating young people in ways that encourage the kind of cosmopolitanism or ‘world citizenship’ discussed by Nussbaum (2002, p. 293). However, one teacher suggested that these kinds of educational experiences were often subject to criticism by parents, who may not feel that time spent on such activities is as important as that spent on more economically-driven pursuits, such as skilling young people for the economy, or focusing on academic subjects. He said, for example, that in a high-fee school like Lakeview, the focus “always comes back to the clients … and the parents want their kids in elite universities, so you’re trying to balance up competing interests … it’s all about the end product.” This echoes research from Lai, Shum and Zhang (2014), which suggests that parents view elements of the IB, such as developing international mindedness through “attributes in the IB Learner Profile” as “a pleasing but unexpected bonus’; an element ‘which they did not regard as the core of the education they were seeking for their children” (p. 88).

Global Citizenship as Relevant to Humanities and Inquiry-Based Learning

A strong theme to emerge at Lakeview amongst educators working in the Middle Years Programme (MYP) and the DP was that global citizenship and related concepts are best facilitated and nourished through humanities-based subjects, such as History and Geography. As one teacher said:

You know, in the higher level Geography class, we talk about global interactions and … that just is aching to be talked about citizenship and how, you know, we are reliant on people we don’t even know and countries we’ve never been in … it’s just organic from the content, from the subject.

The same teacher suggested that facilitating global citizenship education in other subject disciplines would be more difficult:

I think you’d be much, it’d be much more difficult to be an English teacher … I don’t know how Math and Science, I can’t see how they can bring it in.

While many educators would disagree with this conceptualization and see rich avenues for engaging with global citizenship across disciplines, these comments reflected a prevalent theme at Lakeview with regards to which subjects and teachers were responsible for the task of global citizenship education.

Other school leaders and classroom teachers suggested that there was scope for global citizenship to be embedded across all disciplines, however, made it clear that this was not occurring in practice. As one teacher said when reflecting on the extent to which global citizenship was a focus in the humanities, “it doesn’t need to be only the people who do humanities, but it’s just evolved to become that.”

The DP Coordinator also supported the idea that global citizenship had evolved into a humanities concern at Lakeview, suggesting the school offered young people a lack of alternative avenues within other subjects to explore global issues. The DP coordinator said the integration of global themes into the DP was “a struggle” and admitted that the only substantive engagement young people had with such themes was in the “Theory of Knowledge” and “Creativity, Action, Service” components of the curriculum. This supports research conducted by Rizvi et al. (2014), which found the structure and academic demands of the DP were often barriers to engaging with global themes such as ‘intercultural understanding’ in the Learner Profile. Rizvi and colleagues suggest a tension exists between the overloaded curricula requirements of the DP and the notion of engaging young people in moral and ethical debates about global issues. Rizvi and colleagues also found that despite many international schools boldly promoting on paper commitments to global citizenship and related concepts in the DP, the reality is often very different. They also suggest there is a distinct lack of teacher training and professional development in order to better position teachers to engage young people in meaningful learning experiences.

The problem of professional development was strongly echoed by Lakeview’s DP coordinator, who said, bluntly, “there is no training … it doesn’t exist.” Moreover, no professional development or training opportunities regarding global citizenship education were on the horizon at Lakeview, giving an indication of where it sits as a priority for the school.

In contrast to the MYP and DP, Lakeview educators engaged in the PYP reflected more sustained engagements with global citizenship and related concepts, and were also more positive about its potential for being integrated across the curriculum. For example, several teachers made comments to suggest that because the PYP at Lakeview lacked the more rigid subject-based learning structure that Lakeview adopted in the MYP and DP, it allowed teachers more flexibility to engage young people in transdisciplinary learning experiences that could involve a focus on global citizenship and related themes. Importantly, however, teachers described such transdisciplinary experiences as most effective when put into practice through inquiry based projects. The Head of Junior School, for example, spoke in detail about the inquiry-based “concept driven curriculum” in the PYP, which was described as an ideal avenue through which global citizenship education could be promoted:

If you look at our program of inquiry … all grade levels [within the PYP] will have something where culture comes in quite heavily. So for example our EY1s [Early Years Grade 1 Students] start with an ‘All about me’ as 3 year olds do. And it’s age appropriate. Part of it is looking at who’s in your family. Who lives in your house? … But they understood then that, ‘oh hang on, not only do you look different to me but your family’s different’ and it was also, for these little ones, finding out what their culture is and what their celebrations are, and being able to articulate that (Head of Junior School, 2014)

Linked to this, the Head of Junior School also spoke about ways the Learner Profile was harnessed to engage young people with concepts such as intercultural understanding and global citizenship, giving the example of an ‘awards system’ recently introduced in the PYP, designed to recognise students who demonstrate attributes of the learner profile linked to these concepts, such as acting in ways that showed respect for students from different backgrounds.

Examples like these suggest the approach to global citizenship from PYP educators at Lakeview is less about linking the concept to specific subject content, but instead is focused on engaging students in forms of self-inquiry and reflection that ostensibly position them (from an early age) to consider the implications of globalisation and cultural difference. These findings are consistent with research from Skelton et al. (2002), and Van Vooren and Lindsey (2012), which suggests the transdisciplinary and inquiry-based structure of the IB, in particular the PYP, and its focus on developing students’ awareness of “how commonalities operate within different cultures in their own community and internationally” (Van Vooren & Lindsey, 2012, p. 31) is an important step in nurturing students’ cultural proficiency, international-mindedness, and the motivation to “take action as engaged citizens” (p. 25).

Global Citizenship, a Contested But Rich Field of Possibility

In this chapter we have sought to problematize ‘global citizenship’ by exploring its various meanings in education policy and theory, and through examining the ways educators working in an international school understand the concept. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our empirical insights echoed the varied, complex and contested meanings of the concept in policy and theory. School leaders and teachers at Lakeview not only reflected very different views about the concept, but also had varying orientations towards it and expressed distinct views about where it is ‘best placed’ in the curriculum. Some also demonstrated resistance and scepticism towards the term, casting doubt over its worth.

The variation at Lakeview, and in broader literature and policy, highlights what Davies (2006) and Shultz (2007) suggest may be a key crisis issue for global citizenship in education: that is, it has been discussed and researched to the point of abstraction, and is thus perceived by practitioners as having little real-world utility. Put differently, the term has become so all encompassing, but concurrently so diffuse, that it risks meaning everything and nothing at the same time. While some level of abstraction is inevitable when seeking to capture big ideas in theory and policy, and may arguably be generative insofar as it may allow for flexible interpretations by stakeholders, drifting too far from commonality and specificity runs the risk of de-anchoring concepts like global citizenship from normative meanings. This absence of normative meanings then poses problems for stakeholders who seek to enact global citizenship in schools, as it can often be unclear as to how the concept can be put into practice. At Lakeview, for instance, the perceived abstraction of the term prevented the adoption of a framework that could be utilised to meaningfully embed and assess global citizenship and its associated concepts within the curriculum. And as suggested by Wright and Lee (2014), when there is little formal assessment of global citizenship, both staff and students struggle to treat it as a priority.

Our findings strongly support research from Mannion and colleagues (2011) who argue that although recent policies focused on global citizenship encourage schools to embed ‘global dimensions’ within and across subjects, there remains a notable silence as to how this may be practically translated into classrooms. This lack of clarity about how to enact global citizenship is intensified in environments like Lakeview where there is a significant lack of support and professional development for teachers to help them further embed the concept in their classrooms (see DeJaeghere & Cao, 2009; Duckworth, Levy, & Levy, 2005; Gigliotti-Labay, 2010). This scarcity of training offered to teachers at Lakeview reflects the widely held view that teacher education in general is noticeably devoid of cosmopolitan themes (Luke, 2004; McNiff, 2013; Reid & Sriprakash, 2012), exacerbating the problems associated with an already problematic, yet important, educational goal. Indeed, conversations with Lakeview educators not only suggest professional development is non-existent with regards to global citizenship, but also that the school lacks any kind of systematic approach to developing it at the whole-school level, despite strongly marketing commitments to this on-trend concept. The lack of agreement on the term ‘global citizenship’ amongst Lakeview educators, paired with the lack of any ongoing professional development – especially in light of the fact that Lakeview is an elite school whose mission explicitly prioritizes global citizenship and which is incredibly well resourced – suggests that schools lacking explicit commitments to the concept, or schools that have fewer resources, could possibly reflect further confusion or disengagement in relation to global citizenship education. It also points to inherent difficulties that all schools might face in seeking to ‘deepen’ global citizenship beyond the surface level of school marketing.

As the social and economic influences of globalisation continue to intensify, there is likely to be an increased emphasis on global citizenship and related concepts in education policy and practice. This is not only in international curricula and programs like the IB, but also within national and sub-national policy initiatives. It is clear, however, that global citizenship faces conceptual and practical challenges moving forward. Far from being a normative concept, global citizenship is kaleidoscopic in nature, with a range of multi-faceted meanings and diversity of enactments in schools. Far from seeing this diversity of meanings and enactments as a reason to abandon the concept, however, we see the contemporary moment as presenting rich opportunities for stoking further dialogue about how global citizenship can be meaningfully embedded in schools. Gaining further clarity about what the concept means and looks like, however, is likely to make educating for global citizenship a more manageable task for educators. For example, our research suggests that the absence of an operational definition of global citizenship at Lakeview prevents it being meaningfully translated into the curriculum, and also that the absence of a common language within the school is a barrier to the enactment of global citizenship education initiatives.

Now, more than ever, there is need for education to foster the traits, attitudes, behaviours, and competencies associated with global citizenship and cosmopolitanism. Global citizenship might be highly contested, but it presents a rich and exciting field of possibility for education policymakers, school leaders and teachers.